


from time to time

by angelicautowriting



Category: Hunter X Hunter
Genre: Age Regression/De-Aging, Gender-Neutral Pronouns for Kurapika (Hunter X Hunter), Other, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-24
Updated: 2020-06-30
Packaged: 2021-03-03 18:55:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,932
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24900427
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/angelicautowriting/pseuds/angelicautowriting
Summary: "It’s far from the first time Kurapika has woken up like this, but somehow this particular moment feels more unexpected than usual.I was at home,they realize.With Leorio. Shit.Kurapika automatically reaches out with their En and comes across his familiar aura almost immediately, instinctively relaxing, but something’s... off about it. If they were more awake, maybe they would be able to figure out why, but being dumped into awareness like this is disorienting and everything feels jagged."
Relationships: Kurapika & Leorio Paladiknight, Kurapika/Leorio Paladiknight
Comments: 7
Kudos: 57





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> hello and welcome to the kurapika pov version of [now and again](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24450124/chapters/59001085)
> 
> this did not come as easily to me as writing leorio's pov/it feels less "tight"/am not as pleased with it in general. however, just like last time, i do not have an outline or any other chapters written so far! i'm working on it!!! also working on a story where kid leorio wakes up in present leorio and kurapika's apartment, which i also really enjoy but am trying to make it not too similar to this/n&a. we'll see where it goes

Kurapika wakes to a conversation between voices they don’t recognize. They keep their eyes closed and their breathing slow and regular, mentally scrambling to figure out _what happened_.

“D’you think xie got jumped?” It sounds like a child.

“Maybe, there’s no wallet. Or shoes,” another voice responds. “But xier face isn’t busted up or anything, so maybe xie got kicked outta somewhere late last night and just passed out here?”

It’s far from the first time Kurapika has woken up like this, but somehow this particular moment feels more unexpected than usual.

 _I was at home,_ they realize. _With Leorio. Shit._ Kurapika automatically reaches out with their En and comes across his familiar aura almost immediately, instinctively relaxing, but something’s... off about it. If they were more awake, maybe they would be able to figure out why, but being dumped into awareness like this is disorienting and everything feels jagged. There are other auras nearby, summarily dismissed for the time being in favor of more immediate concerns.

“Look at xem though. Xie’re definitely not from around here, not with hair like that.”

“Hold on, check this out,” comes the first voice again as Kurapika senses something moving towards the right side of their head, where their single earring hangs. Without thinking, their hand shoots up to intercept it. _Leorio always tells me to take the jewelry out before sleeping,_ they think regretfully _. Better not let him say he told me so._

They open their eyes, squinting in the sudden brightness. The faces of two children swim into focus, backlit enough that their features are difficult to make out, and Kurapika's fingers are curled around a skinny arm caught mid-reach. ( _Too skinny,_ says a voice in the back of their head.)

A small blade suddenly appears under their chin, cool metal sending a spike of adrenaline down their spine.

“Let him go,” orders the other child, tone even.

Kurapika allows the arm to be jerked back, curled protectively against its owner’s chest. The pressure against their throat lessens incrementally.

“Where’s Leorio?” Kurapika demands, too tired to play games and secure in the knowledge that they could disarm their captor easily.

The two children exchange glances.

“Who’s asking?”

Kurapika can still vaguely sense Leorio, but it looks like the three of them are alone. Could there be a door somewhere they can’t see? They close their eyes to better focus on locating his aura, and their breathing catches hard.

“Whoa, you ok there bud? Don’t go and pass out on us again.”

Kurapika lets their eyes peel open again, slower this time. They latch onto the boy crouched to their left, the one holding the switchblade. Dusty, sun-darkened skin and guarded eyes swirl around one another until they coalesce into something semi-familiar.

“Leorio?” The name comes out as an exhale.

“Yeah, you got me. You tryna collect on something? You don’t look so tough. What kinda enforcer are you, anyway?”

Kurapika makes a noise of vague disagreement and tries to remember how they'd ended up here. Possibilities filter sluggishly through their mind. _Is this some strange dream, a break from the usual nightmares? A new one, maybe? Nothing too bad, so far, but there’s still time._

“What are you doing here, then?” demands the child that isn’t Leorio, bringing Kurapika back to the present. He has the same dark shock of hair, but even crouched down, it’s obvious that he must be a good few centimeters shorter.

“I’m not sure,” Kurapika yawns, adrenaline fading. “Where is ‘here’? What year is it?”

“Man, you really can’t hold your liquor, can you?” Leorio looks at them pityingly, then frowns. “Or are you on something else?”

“I haven’t been drinking, nor have I taken any other drug, thank you.” Kurapika can’t believe they have to defend their sobriety to _Leorio_ , of all people.

Another look is passed between the boys, and Kurapika can practically hear the agreement to humor them. 

Leorio's friend is the one to deliver their mutual verdict. “Yeah, ok. Whatever you say.”

The switchblade is removed from their neck and stowed away in a series of quick, practiced motions. Leorio leans back, studying Kurapika intently.

“How do you know my name? Who are you?”

“I am called Kurapika.” The words conjure the deepest sense of deja vu, a flashback to the first time they said the same words to the same person in a different place and time. It doesn’t even occur to them not to tell this Leorio the truth. Hiding things from him never goes the way Kurapika wants them to, as they’ve learned time and again. They take a deep breath, then say, “We first met when you were nineteen.”

It doesn’t take much to interpret the wide-eyed look mirrored across both boys’ faces. 

“Alright,” Leorio says, stretching the word across too many syllables. He grabs the other child by the shoulders and steers them further down the alley. “If you’ll just give us a sec, Mx. Kurapika, me and Pietro are gonna have a little chat over here.” 

_This is Pietro, then._ Kurapika allows them the pretense of not being able to hear their furiously whispered conversation. _Probably best to let them hash it out, what they want to do about the delusional stranger who claims to know Leorio in the future._

“Xie’s off xier rocker, Leorio, you heard xem. We should cut and run before xie tries something,” Pietro hisses.

“We can’t just leave xem here, xie obviously needs help,” Leorio shoots back.

“Xie could be dangerous! What’s xier deal, acting like xie knows you?”

“I don’t know, but that’s a weirdly specific thing to lie about. Besides, how did xie recognize me in the first place? I would remember meeting someone like xem.”

At that point, their conversation devolves into a back and forth Kurapika can’t fully understand, mostly comprised of theatrical gestures and words that seem to run alongside the standard Hunter language rather than within it, their pronunciation or emphasis just different enough to make it unintelligible. Kurapika wonders if it’s a dialect specific to where Leorio grew up, and how long it took him to lose it after he left. In all the time they've known one another, they can't remember ever hearing him speak like this. ( _How well can you say you know him, if you didn't even know this?_ the voice in their head points out.)

Having come to some sort of an agreement, Pietro and Leorio make their way back to where Kurapika is sitting on the ground.

“We’re going to the market. You can come with us, if you want,” Leorio offers, walking back to where Kurapika has been sitting. They recognize what must be an early version of what they privately refer to as Leorio’s doctor voice, the one he uses with patients at the clinic. Reassuring, calm, efficient. In this case, it sounds like he’s approaching a wild animal, trying to make himself as non-threatening as possible.

“I’ll come, thank you,” Kurapika says, standing up and brushing off the seat of their pants. It comes to their attention that they’re barefoot, still wearing the clothes they wore to sleep the night before. Neither of the boys are wearing shoes, though, so hopefully they won’t be too out of place.

It turns out they were worried about the wrong thing: it’s not the way Kurapika’s dressed that makes them stand out, it’s the way their blonde hair and pale skin acts as a beacon in a sea of people whose coloring more closely matches Leorio’s.

“It’ll make it harder for us to lose track of you,” he jokes when Kurapika notes it aloud. “You really aren’t from around here, huh?”

Pietro chimes in, “Yeah, and the way you talk is pretty weird, too. Are you from the upper city?”

“Mmm, not quite. I grew up on the Azian continent,” Kurapika says, distracted. They haven’t decided whether they think this is a dream or not. _The manifestation of some nen ability, perhaps?_

“No way!” the boys cry in almost perfect unison, looking up at them like they'd just admitted to being from the moon. Kurapika remembers being young enough that the concept of anything beyond the borders of Lukso seemed impossibly far away, practically a different universe. It's cute, seeing such a genuinely impressed response from child-Leorio.

A vendor from a stall a bit ahead of them waves at their group, beckoning them over, pulling the kids' attention away again.

“Hold on, I’ll be right back,” Pietro promises before darting ahead, leaving Kurapika alone with Leorio.

“...So, how do we hypothetically meet, if you live so far away?” The hands shoved in pockets and decidedly casual tone of voice make it obvious Leorio is trying to play it cool.

Kurapika hesitates. _Is it alright to tell him about things that haven’t happened yet, from his perspective?_

_Fuck it._

“We meet on a ship on our way to take the Hunter Exam," they reply, trying to match his indifferent attitude. 

Leorio’s expression shifts to something straddling the line between awe and disbelief.

“Are you a Hunter?” he asks, breathless. And then, “Am _I_ a Hunter?” The idea seems to catch him by surprise.

“Theoretically, a future Hunter wouldn’t need to ask that question,” Kurapika says solemnly, pretending they aren’t expressly waiting for Leorio’s reaction.

“What!” Leorio exclaims, aghast. He stops walking in order to gawk at them as dramatically as possible. “What’s the point of being from the future if you won’t tell me anything!”

Somehow, Leorio’s exaggerated outrage makes something settle in their chest. _You’ve always allowed yourself to get riled up so easily,_ Kurapika thinks fondly. It’s reassuring to see some part of the person they know in the scrappy child in front of them. Something familiar to hold onto in the midst of all this.

They end up settling on _most likely not a nightmare._


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Look what Thyma had today!” Pietro crows, barreling back into the conversation. Several bruised-looking pears are clutched against his chest. “Xie told me not to forget that the truck is coming tomorrow morning instead of on Friday, like usual.”
> 
> “Nice! And it’s a good thing xie said something. Can you imagine if we forgot and didn’t show? Xie’d be _pissed,_ ” Leorio cackles before turning to Kurapika, explaining, “We help Thyma unload xier produce delivery every week, and in exchange, xie gives us the stuff people won't buy.” 
> 
> Kurapika nods, thinking of the perpetually full fruit bowl that sits in the center of the kitchen table in their shared apartment. Of how Leorio always tucks some of whatever they have into Alluka's bag whenever she comes over, despite her giggling protests that her brother does in fact feed her real meals, even if all _he_ seems to eat is dessert. 

Kurapika lets him splutter for a few more seconds before giving in and asking, “Do you believe me, then? That we know one another?”

Leorio pulls himself together, jaw snapping shut. 

“I’m talking hypothetically here. You haven’t even tried to prove you’re not full of shit.”

They put a hand on their hip, looking at him appraisingly. 

“How old are you now? Thirteen? Fourteen?” 

“I’ll be twelve next month. Don’t worry, a lot of people guess that I’m older than I really am,” he boasts, looking proud. “Probably because I’m so tall!”

Kurapika turns their head under the guise of watching a passing food cart so Leorio can’t see their smirk. _Just wait a few years._

They try to call up something Leorio has told them about this period of his life, something the Leorio in front of them would have already experienced. They come to realize he’s never really talked about his childhood at length, instead bringing up little things here and there, silly anecdotes about his friends or descriptions of particularly dumb things he'd done. Kurapika picks one at random.

“You and the kids from your block play soccer almost every day in the alley behind the laundromat because the vents at the back of the building circulate the air and it always smells clean.” 

Leorio is unimpressed. 

“...It’s weird that you know that, yeah, but you could’ve just been following me around. You don’t need to be from the future to be a creep.”

Kurapika rolls their eyes, hands still on their hips. 

“In my time, you’ll still have that scar on your arm from when Pietro was trying to learn how to use a butterfly knife.”

Leorio’s hand unconsciously comes up to cup his right shoulder, where the relatively fresh wound must be hidden by his t-shirt. 

“When did he tell you about that?”

“He and I only met for the first time today. You told me that story once when you were going on about the impracticality of fan knives." Kurapika pauses, casting about for some other evidence they can use to prove themselves, but can't bring to mind any other memories that might help their case. They’ve never been one to pry, and aren’t particularly forthcoming about their own childhood, but how little they know about Leorio’s past seems odd, now.

“Look what Thyma had today!” Pietro crows, barreling back into the conversation. Several bruised-looking pears are clutched against his chest. “Xie told me not to forget that the truck is coming tomorrow morning instead of on Friday, like usual.”

“Nice! And it’s a good thing xie said something. Can you imagine if we forgot and didn’t show? Xie’d be _pissed,_ ” Leorio cackles before turning to Kurapika, explaining, “We help Thyma unload xier produce delivery every week, and in exchange, xie gives us the stuff people won't buy.” 

Kurapika nods, thinking of the perpetually full fruit bowl that sits in the center of the kitchen table in their shared apartment. Of how Leorio always tucks some of whatever they have into Alluka's bag whenever she comes over, despite her giggling protests that her brother does in fact feed her real meals, even if all _he_ seems to eat is dessert.

Pears acquired, the three of them wade further into the bustle of the marketplace, Kurapika trailing behind the other two. They make their way towards a fountain at the end of the street, where the boys perch themselves on top of the short retaining wall. Kurapika watches Pietro glance around quickly before motioning to Leorio, who leans over the edge and surreptitiously fishes out a few coins. He straightens and hops down, casually striding away, Pietro only a step behind him. Kurapika attempts to tamp down the laughter that threatens to bubble up from their chest. Together, the pair would be the picture of innocence, if not for the water still dripping down Leorio’s arm. 

Once they’ve rounded the corner, Leorio and Pietro huddle over their spoils, counting out the change. Leorio nods approvingly. 

“If we play our cards right, this could be enough for two packets of shrimp chips.” 

Kurapika frowns. Glancing over his shoulder at the small pile of coins, they estimate that there can’t be more than 150, maybe 200 jenny, max. Barely enough for a vending machine soda, much less _one_ bag of shrimp chips. 

“Two!” Pietro whoops. “The kids’ll be hyped.” He seems to share Leorio’s optimism, but Kurapika privately doubts the feasibility of this plan. 

“Let’s head for the convenience store by the train station,” Leorio suggests, eyebrows wiggling, and with that, their little group sets off again. 

Their earlier conversation keeps echoing in Kurapika’s head. _Eleven._ Based on their own life experience, Kurapika knows their sense of “normal” is warped, and spending so much time with kids like Gon and Killua hasn’t helped either. But they can’t help but think that Leorio doesn’t act the way they'd expect from a child of his age. _It's not just his height that makes him seem older than he really is._

“Wait for me here!” Leorio calls, disappearing inside with the jingle of the bell over the door. Kurapika can see him through the glass storefront, only slightly obscured by the reflections of the street behind them. Leorio looks around as though he’s browsing, slowly making his way toward the display of shrimp chips. 

“Don’t worry, Leorio’s the best at this,” Pietro’s voice floats up from where he’s plunked himself down on the curb by Kurapika's feet. 

“The best at what?” They watch as Leorio walks up to the display, where he begins inspecting individual bags of chips.

“Making deals, of course. No one can haggle better than he can.” 

He keeps sorting through the bags, rejecting them one at a time after scanning the back of each package intently. _By this point, Leorio must have checked essentially every bag on the shelf, so why...?_

“What’s he doing? Aren’t they all the same?” Kurapika can't bring themselves to stop watching Leorio now that they can do so unobserved.

Pietro glances up.

“There’s a strategy, I said don't worry about it.” Mostly unobserved, anyway. 

Inside the store, Leorio finally selects a single bag and walks up to the front counter. As he’s being rung up, Leorio says something to the clerk and motions to the back of the chip bag. They appear to get into an argument, drawing the attention of the other customers in the store.

“Ah, alright then.” Kurapika has no idea what’s going on. They haven’t, not since they woke up here, not really.

Someone pushes the door open on their way out, and before it can swing shut, Leorio can be heard yelling, “I can’t believe you’re trying to get away with selling expired merchandise!” The clerk blanches and looks around the store, where the other shoppers have stopped to watch the scene unfolding at the register. 

“Told you he knew what he was doing,” Pietro says, sounding almost bored, like this is a scene he's seen play out a million times.

The clerk waves their arms frantically, obviously trying to get Leorio to quiet down. After exchanging a few more words, Leorio retrieves another bag from the display and pushes both across the counter, handing over his scant handful of change and looking pleased. 

“And if you think you can mess Leorio around with all this future stuff, think again. I don’t know what you’re tryna do, but I won’t let anything happen to him,” Pietro continues, in the same offhand way.

Kurapika doesn’t know what to say to that. They’re saved from having to respond when Leorio breezes back outside, plastic bag held aloft in victory. 

“Alright, let’s go!” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> in my mind, leorio had a pretty rough childhood (even before everything with pietro went down) but just like... doesn't make a big deal about it
> 
> i wanted to contrast his long-term character development with kurapika's- i.e. how different forms of trauma manifest themselves in different ways 
> 
> so kid leorio is more self-preservation focused and less trusting, then opens up over time once he's more materially/emotionally secure as an adult, whereas kid pika has more faith in other people/is more willing to be vulnerable than adult kurapika. but obviously core components of each of their personalities persist over time!


End file.
